Review of Elementarteilchen

… or Atomised, as it’s known in English. This is definitely the kind of film you need to see, as I did, between summer blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Superman Returns. It’s an unglorified, understated character study of a pair of rather love-lorn half-brothers and it’s about 80% excellent. We’ll come to what that means later.

One of the brothers, Michael, is an emotionally blank scientist who faces his problems with a phlegmatic smile and seems to just hope that they’ll go away. The other brother, Bruno, is more outgoing, but is more evidently tortured by his own demons – such as the fact that he’s no longer able to perform in his marital bed. And it’s this character who is more engaging, even though I empathised more with his brother.

The acting is very good, particularly for the Bruno character – it never goes over the top, but you can see his inner torment and helplessness written on his face. Michael, meanwhile, provides much less opportunity for the actor – he’s a closed book, he speaks little, answering many comments with nothing but that gentle smile.

For the most part, the shy brother’s half of the story is also slightly weaker: his solution is pretty much handed to him. His half-sibling, however, goes out to find love and eventually does. But. The last 20-30 minutes of the film just don’t work: firstly, the film is slow-moving anyway and the last section makes it too long, and secondly, the additional plots twists were just too much – rather ridiculous, in fact.

Up until that point, it was a extremely good film, and if you pretend that it ends there and stop watching you might enjoy it more. As it is, it’s merely very good.